1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus and method for a business process tracking, a business process tracking program and a recording medium thereof, and more particularly to an apparatus and method for a business process tracking, a business process tracking program and a recording medium thereof, which use business process tracking technology that tracks a business process that flows among a plurality of business systems, and which make groups of event information extracted from each business system in units of business data, manages the business data with relating each other, and tracks business process on the basis of retrieval conditions inputted.
2. Description of the Related Art
When improving an existing business under operation, an analysis of the business process between business systems is conducted to determine where a problem is and how to improve it. There is a workflow system as a system which watches how a business flows between business systems. Generally, a workflow system has meaning of a system which is provided with an existing flow engine and is provided with an application program (hereinafter, simply called “application”) which performs automatic execution of a system in order of following a defined flow.
FIG. 37 is a diagram showing the outline of a conventional common workflow system. FIG. 37 shows a flow management server 20, an application E 21, an application F 22, an application G 23, and an application H 24. The applications E to H or 21 to 24 are located in different systems, respectively. FIG. 37 further shows a workflow E 200, a workflow F 201, a workflow G 202, and a historical database (DB) 203 in the flow management server 20 which manages the execution history of the applications E to G or 21 to 23.
Furthermore, FIG. 37 shows a status DB 210 of managing the status of the application E 21, a status DB 220 of managing the status of the application F 22, a status DB 230 of managing the status of the application G 23, and a status DB 240 of managing the status of the application H 24.
In addition, the application E 21, application F 22 and application G 23 are called from and executed in the workflow E 200, workflow F 201 and workflow G 202, respectively. On the other hand, it is assumed that the application H 24 has not such an execute form that it is called and executed from either of the above mentioned workflows.
In the workflow system shown in FIG. 37, with defining that businesses between different systems flow in order of the workflow E 200, workflow F 201, and workflow G 202, the flow management server 20 manages the execution history of an application corresponding to each workflow. That is, the flow management server 20 executes the application E 21 corresponding to the workflow E 200, executes the application F 22 corresponding to the workflow F 201 after the execution end of the application E 21, and executes the application G 23 corresponding to the workflow G 202 after the execution end of the application F 22.
In addition, Japanese Patent Application laid-Open No. 10(1998)-63747 (patent document #1) shows a workflow support system and method for making it possible to refer to or follow the history and the management information of progress with regard to a workflow or a typical business that is executed with spreading across different systems.
However, the workflow system shown in FIG. 37 has the structure of sequentially executing each application consistently and the flow management server 20 manages only the execution history of each application. Accordingly, it is difficult to grasp the status of each application. For this reason, for example, in order to meet a request that the flow management server 20 should manage various businesses in an application E 21, it is necessary to modify the application E 21 for subdivision of the internal processing of the application E 21, and to modify such that the subdivided processings are called from the flow management server 20 to execute them.
In addition, for example, the application H 24 is not made to be called and executed by either of the workflows E to G or 200 to 202. Accordingly, the flow management server 20 cannot grasp the status of the application H 24. Then, in order to grasp the status of the application H 24, it is necessary to modify the structure of the application H 24 such that the application H 24 has a form in which the application H 24 is called from and executed by a workflow.
Furthermore, in the present workflow system, as shown in FIG. 38, there is a problem that it is not possible to grasp the relation between applications which branch into a plurality of paths on the way. In FIG. 38, for example, the workflow F 201 makes the application F 22 and application F′ 22′ execute a plurality of processing in relation to the workflow E 200 separately. In addition, the workflow G 202 makes the application G 23 and application G′ 23′ execute a plurality of processing in relation to the workflow F 201 separately. It is assumed that the data of the application F 22 and the data of the application F′ 22′ is made to be passed to both of the application G 23 and application G′ 23′.
A conventional common workflow system cannot grasp the relation between the application F 22 or F′ 22′ and the application G23 or G′ 23′. For this reason, to grasp the relation between applications which branch into a plurality of paths on the way, it is necessary to review a business process and an analysis method such as dividing the business process into a plurality of processes, and analyzing them separately.
In addition, the above mentioned patent document #1 does not disclose the technology in which the tracking result of the flow of a business between business systems is displayed in a flow form.
In particular, plenty of existing business systems is not necessarily executing transactions according to a workflow under a flow engine such as the flow management server 20. When the flow management server 20 does not exist, data such as processed data and unprocessed data must be collected by accessing each business system and analyzed to track the flow of the business. Accordingly, actually, it is impossible to track the flow of the business.